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Church groups are frequently a cause of corruption and confusion in politics. Don't expect any real help from them.
Women, as a group, are less politically enlightened and less politically honest than men. Test them before you trust them.
Elderly people, as a group, are politically selfish and socially irresponsible. Avoid organized groups of the old folks.
Reliable volunteer political workers are found most frequently among young people. However, the very best political volunteers are found in the three groups mentioned above.
Machine politicians are about as honest as the general run of people, and more honest about oral promises.
Machine politicians are friendly, warm-hearted, and will take pains to help people. An amateur who expects to compete must emulate these virtues.
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A government should not be run like a business; a business should not be run like a government. They are very different
Compromising is an honest process indispensable to free men governing themselves.
"Civil Service" is frequendy a mask for a shameless spoils system. Patronage is a political liability to the politician who has to dispense k.
Public Office is usually scandalously underpaid; this is the fault of the public and a frequent cause of corruption in public life. Nevertheless, most officials are too honest and too patriotic to succumb to the temptations placed before them. For that reason we have better government than the people deserve.
It is both virtuous and efficient to be partisan and party regular, but it requires both moral courage and clear thinking to accomplish it
CHAPTER IV Field and Club Organization
Four Thumb Rules:
1. Your purpose is to win elections, not arguments.
2. Elections are won with votes and the votes are in the precincts.
3. You win by persuading your own voters to register and vote.
4. Don't waste time trying to convert a man who has already made up his mind.
The above four rules are applied successfully through organized field activity based on personal calls and begun long before the election.
Doorbell-busking: Always work from a list. Don't be aggressive. Cut the visit short. Record all information on a file case for follow-up.
Political clubs contain very few votes but they are indispensable (a) for organization and liaison of precinct workers (b) to keep up the morale of precinct workers by
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giving a "team" feeling. They also constitute seminars in democratic government.
How and When to Form a Club: Your party needs a club in any area that does not have one, but you should not found one unless you are prepared to do the working of leading it
Leadership comes to him who works - the tedious, routine work of organization is the only "secret."
The easiest way to make people like you is to like them-and say so!
To associate names with faces, ask the owner, on being introduced, to pronounce and spell the name - then use it immediately.
You don't have to be perfect in parliamentary law to handle the gavel successfully. A moderate knowledge of Roberts' Rules of Order, common sense, and fairness will get you by with the aid of this rule: The assembly itself is the final judge of the rules; make your rulings prompdy and inform anyone you overrule of his right to appeal to the house. If he appeals, take a vote on the appeal without debate.
Use your power as chairman to divert matters of personal bitterness into committee where you can arbitrate them in private.
A motion to adjourn is always in order and is not debatable - but, as chairman, you may remind the house of any pertinent fact before calling for a vote.
Your new dub must have a chairman who can keep the business moving without antagonizing people. It is better to be floor leader than chairman, but you may have to take the gavel if you can't find such a person.
Learn to be a penny-pincher with club funds. Votes, not dollars, win elections.
Note: The word "precinct" is used throughout to indicate an area which one person can campaign successfully, say from 100 to 400 registered voters depending on population density.
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CHATTER V Club Meetings and Speech Making
The First Meeting of a New Club:
(a) To get a crowd use personal invitations primarily, plus cheap methods of local publicity.
(b) Use a small hall and fill it with loud music, card tables, not too many chairs. Start with group singing. Have a dynamic speaker and some entertainment. Limit business to plans for next meeting and discussion of purpose of club. Serve simple refreshments afterwards and let the kids dance.
(c) Record on file cards all possible information about all persons present-then follow up. This file is your basic political weapon.
Speaking in Public:
Be brief. Don't worry about eloquence. Funny stories are not necessary.
You can get past your first appearance as a principal speaker by using an audience-participation quiz. This gag can be used over and over again until you gain confidence.
CHAPTER VI Political Influence, Its Sources, Uses, and Abuses
Claims of "controlling a district" are usually nonsense. There are two major ways in which a politician controls votes (a) by being the active leader of a live precinct organization (b) by the gradual and unconscious acquisition of a following who depend on him for reliable political information and advice.
Be prepared to furnish advice to your acquaintances by doing your studying of candidates and propositions early. Thus you may expect to influence the votes of about 250 people.
A fool-proof method of marking a sample ballot without previous study is to mark it against the choices of the newspaper you despise most.
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Patronage: Policy positions, except under extraordinary conditions, should go only to active partisans, but non-policy jobs should be filled without respect to partisanship.
When Called on to Dispense Patronage:
(a) Accept the responsibility.
(b) Refuse to countenance a "spoils" attitude.
(c) Be frank with the applicant.
(d)Be warm-hearted and helpful. Remember his human dignity.
(e) Don't try shenanigans with the federal civil service.
(f) There are many temporary non-certified federal jobs. Know the details about them so that you can advise people how to apply for them.
(g) Keep party politics out of Annapolis, West Point, and Coast Guard Academy recommendations. Instead be prepared to help applicants with accurate information and advice.
Moving in on a Party Organization: In cities where a corrupt machine is well entrenched the "official" opposition party organization is usually a clandestine part of the Machine. (Warning: Do not assume that a "machine" is necessarily a "corrupt machine.") Tb take over your own party machinery when it is owned by such a false-front group you must first take over the "reform" wing of your party and then win a primary for control of the official party machinery.
In taking over the reform group be extremely careful to preserve the prestige of its titular leaders. The process of taking over consists merely in joining and being more active than the titular leaders.
After winning control of party machinery in the primary make no compromises nor concessions of any sort under any circumstances at all to the group you have displaced, if you have certain knowledge that they have been in the business of selling out to the other side -but be sure of your facts!
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CHAPTER VII District Spadework, Choosing a Candidate, Caucusing
Even an excellent candidate can lose by neglecting the basic rule that elections are won with votes and votes are in the precincts. Don't attempt to elect a candidate until you have built up a precinct organization.
Selecting a Candidate:
1. Suitability - "sound" on issues from the viewpoint of you and your party; unquestionable character and integrity; record of unselfish public service; intelligence, education and experience.
2. Availability - able and willing to devote enough time and hard work to the campaign and able to afford the financial sacrifice of holding office.
3. Electability - if suitable and available a candidate is usually electable provided he has acquired immunity to "candidatitis" - a form of buck fever peculiar to inexperienced candidates, their managers, and their families - and provided he is willing to be managed in all respects save his stand on public issues. The superficial aspects of electability are usually quite unimportant. A suitable, available, and electable man is unlikely to want the job - you must seek him out and convince him that his sacrifice could be worth while, through the reasonableness of your plans and budget, by your analysis of the district, and by the strength of your precinct organization.
Budgets should be prepared and funds raised before your candidate announces.
Caucusing: Caucusing is a democratic process whereby like-minded individuals agree to work unanimously to a common end; it is a usual method for getting political associates behind one candidate. Unanimity is the essence of caucusing. The original
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terms by which the caucus is bound cannot be changed other than by unanimous consent - these terms must be clear to everyone before the caucus is signed.
There are no circumstances under which a man may honorably break a caucus. Be sure what you are signing - then don't kid yourself later!
You are justified in using any available legal means to enforce a caucus once bound.
If you cannot get a strong caucus behind your favorite candidate then he is not yet ready to run nor you to manage. Drop back and be a precinct worker for another candidate.
CHAPTER Vill The Grass-Roots Campaign
Two Rules f or Effective Campaigning:
(a) Is the action directed at specific, individual votes?
(b) If not, is it directed at your own district? Can it be done without sacrificing anything under (a)? Can it be done with minimum effort and at no cost? If it costs anything at all is it covered by your original plans and budget?
Effective Methods: Anything which goes after an individual vote, especially:
(a) canvassing by the candidate
(b) canvassing by precinct workers
(c) canvassing by the manager Put the candidate on a 40-hour week of doorbell-pushing for three months; the manager should canvass two afternoons per week.
Ineffective Methods: Meeting outside the district, signs outside the district, radio speeches.
Borderline Methods: Meetings inside the district, publicity by signs, newspapers, and radio spot plugs.
The Campaign Committee: Use a large "public committee" for advertising purposes, the officers of which have nominal duties and have been selected to
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represent the community - Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and minority groups. The working committee is the candidate, manager, money raiser, publicity man, field supervisors, and precinct workers.
Headquarters: Public, swank headquarters are a waste of money. You need nothing but floor space, chairs and tables, a typewriter and a telephone. Take drastic measures to keep the telephone from being used for toll calls except by specific authority of the
manager.
Campaign Funds: Handle by check, require two signatures out of three, provide an audit.
Unavoidable Types of Expense: Filing fee, printing, postage, telephone bills, election night party
refreshments.
Conditional Types of Expense: Signboard rental, newspaper display advertising, handbill distribution, salaries of publicity director and office person, lunch money and car fare for volunteers, radio spot plugs, extra personal political expenses of candidate and
manager. No other types of expense should be tolerated in a
volunteer grass-roots campaign.
Training and Management of Precinct Workers: Form a club with membership limited absolutely to doorbell-pushers; build its morale in every possible way. Be lavish in praise. Require the candidate to spend all evening at the weekly meeting of this club without fail.
Split your workers into area squads often or less using the best leader talent available. Train them at dub meetings, in the field by sending freshmen out with old hands, and by means of photocopied instructions.
Emphasize recording and filing all doorbell data for
election day follow-up.
Never canvas "blind"-use lists. Afairly accurate list of members of your party who vote in primaries may be prepared from official records of voters "signing the
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book." Don't tackle a primary campaign until you have prepared such a list.
CHAPTER IX Landmarks and Booby Traps
Don't waste volunteers on the blanket distribution of political literature.
"Volunteers" who won't or can't punch doorbells
should be worked hard at office work. Don't let them
lounge in headquarters - especially the Big Operator.
Make people come to see you - unless it's your idea.
Insist that the candidate conform to your discipline.
Lay it on the line!
Brace yourself for phonies, sell-outs, and other disappointments.
Publicity: If humanly possible, get a professional publicity man.
Never mention your opponent by name, neither in printing, signs, meetings, nor in doorbell pushing. Don't budget too much money to newspaper ads and publicity.
Short radio spot plugs during the last week may be worth the money.
Prefer 6-sheets to 24-sheets. One-sheets, half-sheets, quarter-cards, and bumper strips are cheap and useful.
The prime purpose of publicity is to strengthen the morale of your workers and supporters by creating a bandwagon atmosphere. Publicity gets very few votes but it keeps the campaign from dropping out of sight. Pinch the pennies - publicity can bankrupt you.
Party Harmony: A successful primary fight is worthless if it splits open your party. Keep it clean!
A party-wide Sunday breakfast club is a cheap and easy way to keep the party factions friendly during the primary.
Scouting and Heckling: Scout opponent's public meetings for information; heckle only to nail a lie. For
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heckling use well-dressed, well-mannered, small women who can keep their tempers and their wits under stress. Train them to attack the lie and not the liar.
In coping with a heckler, treat him with great politeness and insist that he talk himself out. Then refute him after he has returned to his seat.
If possible, give direct unequivocal answers to questions from the floor. If the question is irrelevant, impertinent, or loaded, counter-attack by demanding details from the questioner and publicly set a date for a (private) meeting with the questioner to permit detailed investigation.
Don't use the above device to duck a proper issue, even though embarrassing.
Sampling a District: Cultivate skill in predicting election results by making and recording all possible predictions, then examine your results in the postmortem. Try to analyze your mistakes.
Check the progress of campaigning by a statistical poll. Make up a random list by taking, for example, the last name from the middle column of every third precinct list, then poll them by telephone or post card, using a question form which does not suggest the desired answer. When fifty responsive replies are in, double the number of favorable replies, subtract eight, and treat the answer as a percentage which indicates what per cent of the vote you could be reasonably sure of if the election were held at once.
Supplement this by prowling through your district, looking for chances to gossip about politics. In a primary, if one in four of the people you meet in your excursion know who your candidate is, his chances are excellent; if only one in ten have heard of him his chances are poor.
Don't expect the majority of the population even to notice a primary.
CHAPTER X The Final Sprint
Final Mail Coverage: Send signed post cards or personal letters to all persons called on. Don't use third class mail.
Election Day: Regroup to cover the precincts covered by the candidate. The purpose of election day work is to get every certain and every probable vote, as determined by canvassing, to the polls. Telephoning the night before and election morning is used to separate the certain voters from those who must be coaxed or carried. Election afternoon is used to round up stragglers. Work from lists. Use any left-over time to carry any members of your party to the polls and thereby pick up a few stray votes in return for the courtesy of a ride.
Use poll workers if available-conform to local law.
Election Night: Have the count watched and the results telephoned in. Give a headquarters party with refreshments for workers and friends.
Post-Primary Troubles:
Don't forget:
Personal notes to all who have helped.
Get-together and rally meeting of Doorbell Club
Heal-the-wounds meeting of the Breakfast Club
County committee meeting
State committee meeting
State convention
Official report of campaign expenditures.
Vacations for you and for the candidate.
But your principal effort will be to bring candidates you have defeated into line at once.
Final Campaign: Organize a district campaign for the entire ticket and have your candidate beat his own drum by campaigning for the entire ticket.
Keep your candidate's campaign funds separate from the district funds.
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In congressional contests attempt to get national committee funds allotted to your district
